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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688096">we who walk in shadows black</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar'>Evandar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Dark Harry Potter, Don’t copy to another site, HP Cross Gen Fest 2020, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Harry Potter is a Little Shit, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Past Character Death, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:02:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,509</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688096</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The boy looks up, eyes like the killing curse framed by soot-black lashes, and smiles. It’s a cold, wicked thing with far too many teeth to be friendly and far from the attitude Dumbledore is likely expecting.</em> </p><p>In which Harry Potter is a vicious little gremlin who knows too much, and Lord Voldemort adores him for it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>75</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Dark Harry Is Amazing, HP Cross Gen Fest 2020, Harry Potter, Qualis Ficta, Yukikawa’s HP Bookshelf, cream of the crop</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've been resurrected just in time for my favourite fest. Thanks to Gracerene for running it this year! Major thanks also go to my beloved R for her work as beta. Any remaining errors are my own.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He watches through Quirrell’s eyes as Hagrid brings the Potter child into their world. He watches as the boy is swamped, surrounded by well-wishers – pathetic, gullible <i>fools</i> who believe him dead – who shake his hand and grovel and <i>bow</i>. Whispers rise: <i>“welcome back, Mr Potter, welcome back,”</i> and in the middle of the surging crowd – Hagrid standing over him, beaming with pride – the boy looks tiny, too pale to be healthy, and shrouded in Muggle rags ten sizes too big for him.</p><p><strike>He remembers the itch of starched shirts and the heavy weight of the dolly peg straining his arms and the blisters on his palms before he soothed them away with magic.</strike> The Boy-Who-Lived is hardly the coddled princeling he’s been expecting, but then, he knows from experience that Dumbledore fully supports placing magical children under the neglectful watch of Muggles as long as it suits his purpose. From the rags and the tattered shoes and the faint bruise around the child’s bicep, just peeking out from under his sleeve, it appears that ‘the greater good’ has once again won out over child welfare. Dumbledore wants his little saviour beaten and meek and poised, no doubt, to worship him.</p><p>That explains Hagrid, at least.</p><p>He urges Quirrell closer, catching the child’s attention. The boy looks up, eyes like the Killing Curse framed by soot-black lashes, and smiles. It’s a cold, wicked thing with far too many teeth to be friendly and far from the attitude Dumbledore is likely expecting.</p><p>Against his will, he likes it.</p><p>“Hello, professor,” he says. He does not offer his hand, but Quirrell flinches anyway.</p><p>Lord Voldemort is intrigued.</p><p>…</p><p>Potter graces the Headmaster with his vicious little goblin smile as he walks to be Sorted. </p><p>Potter has the <i>audacity</i> to be Sorted into Slytherin.</p><p>He walks to his new House with the whole hall in silence, his head held high. He sits with his back to the wall and turns his gaze to the high table, his amusement at their shock written plain across his features.</p><p>The boy catches Quirrell’s eye and <i>winks</i>.</p><p>Lord Voldemort, coiled around Quirrell’s mind and magic, begins to wonder.</p><p>…</p><p>Whispers follow Potter through the halls like ghosts. Or, rather, like the ghosts do not. They flee from the boy who survived the Killing Curse like spiders before a basilisk. Even the shades, the echoes of deaths long past, seem to sense him. They flee him as well, and Lord Voldemort urges Quirrell to keep close to the boy when he can. </p><p>The shades unnerve him. He hadn’t seen them before he lost his body, hadn’t realised how deeply death infected <i>everything</i>, even Hogwarts, his first and only home. <strike>He hadn’t realised, even when he’d seen it for himself: heard sirens blaring and bombs falling; children sobbing in the tunnels of the underground – the little ones from the orphanage reaching even to <i>him</i> for comfort in their fear; picked mangled bodies from the rubble and carted them away on stretchers. He’d seen, but hadn’t <i>seen</i>.</strike> There’s an odd sort of peace to be found around Potter, despite his unnerving smile and the way he seems to look at Quirrell’s turban as if he knows <i>exactly</i> who’s under it.</p><p>The irony of all this is not lost on Lord Voldemort.</p><p>…</p><p>Staff meetings are…<i>wonderful</i>.</p><p>Dumbledore arrives at each one looking progressively more exhausted, the twinkle in his eye dimmed and a grave expression on his face. He’s sporting a hazel wand that he hasn’t used since the mid-forties – the strange, dark, antique one he’d been using for years has apparently gone missing – and he ends each meeting with the same question.</p><p>“And how is Mr Potter?”</p><p>And the <i>answers</i>. “Mr Potter is –“</p><p>Bored.</p><p>He drifts through his classes, barely paying attention. He performs his spells perfectly on the first try, then moves to silent casting. He dashes off his homework almost casually, and spends his time studying pureblood etiquette and law, and yet he still effortlessly out-performs the ever-eager Miss Granger.</p><p>Prodigious.</p><p>He’s too good, really. It’s not just first year spells. The boy casually performs NEWT-level magic without noticeable effort.</p><p>Anti-social.</p><p>He doesn’t have friends. He doesn’t seem to talk to anyone except to – </p><p>
  <i>“Yes, please do tell your father, Malfoy. I’m sure he’s missed your endless whining. And while you’re at it, tell him he’s a spineless coward who married a woman he’ll never deserve. Your Mum’s cool. You can tell her I said ‘hi’.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Hi, yes, I am absolutely the Boy-Who-Lived because I learned how to defeat Dark Lords before I stopped shitting myself on a daily basis. It definitely wasn’t anything my parents did, noooooooo.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Asphodel and wormwood, professor? I thought the Draught of Living Death was on the NEWT syllabus. If you’re expecting us to read that far ahead then you’re going to be deeply disappointed in, say, Goyle. He’s still on The Hungry Caterpillar and, honestly sir, it’s giving him some problems.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I thought my scar was shaped like lightning, not a giant fucking sign saying ‘ask me about the murder of my parents.’ Do you treat all orphans like this or am I just lucky?”</i>
</p><p>Disturbing.</p><p>There are other things too. Things that he saw first, but that his colleagues are beginning to notice. The blue-ish tinge to Potter’s lips and extremities. The way he sometimes seems to stop breathing for far longer than should be possible.</p><p>The way, Severus claims, he doesn’t seem to sleep.</p><p>And it’s not just Dumbledore’s wand that’s gone missing. Books, as well, from the Restricted Section. An invisibility cloak that once belonged to James Potter. A rat belonging to the youngest Weasley.</p><p>Harry Potter is dark.</p><p>Harry Potter is quite possibly a necromancer if his pilfered reading material is anything to go by.</p><p>Harry Potter is an absolute <i>gremlin</i>, and truth-be-told, Lord Voldemort likes him far more than he should.</p><p>…</p><p>Potter vanishes over the winter holidays only to resurface in January with family rings for the Potter and Black lines decorating his right hand, and the locket of Salazar Slytherin around his neck. Threaded on the same chain is an equally familiar ring. The newspaper screams of an impending trial for Sirius Black and a second break-in at Gringotts. The staff and students gossip wildly, and the expression on Dumbledore’s face would have been the most glorious thing he’s ever seen if not for that glint of silver around Potter’s neck.</p><p>Instead, his fury is blinding. He drags Quirrell to the Room of Requirement only to find the diadem missing as well.</p><p>His horcruxes. Harry Potter is collecting his horcruxes.</p><p>
  <strike>If he wasn’t so terrified, he’d be impressed.</strike>
</p><p>Potter spends that afternoon’s Defence lesson grinning at Quirrell’s turban like the feral thing he is, his famous scar red-raw and bloody on his too-pale forehead. He taps blackened fingernails against the wood of his desk, not bothering to parse through Quirrell’s stuttering to take notes.</p><p>It’s a challenge. It’s a warning. Potter knows exactly what he’s doing. He wouldn’t be surprised if Potter knew about the Stone. </p><p>Potter is an unholy terror, after all. Lord Voldemort <strike>adores</strike> loathes him.</p><p>…</p><p>It’s a strange thing. Once he stops panicking – his horcruxes may be in Potter’s possession, but they are so far undamaged – his mind seems calmer than it has been in years. His temper improves. His magic strengthens. He stops requiring unicorn blood as often, and his grip on Quirrell strengthens.</p><p>His horcruxes are in the castle, close-by, in the possession of a child, and he feels far better in himself than he has in decades. </p><p>He pores over research. There are few resources available on horcruxes, and what little was once in the library has disappeared. Whether to Potter or Dumbledore, he can’t be sure, though he finds himself hoping it’s to the former. The boy himself seems as unaffected by their presence as he is by Lord Voldemort’s. He continues drifting through classes and studying law and gives not a single sign of possession.</p><p>He catches him, once or twice, stroking the chain of the locket like it’s a precious thing.</p><p>Despite his earlier panic, Lord Voldemort is…glad.</p><p>…</p><p>Potter, of course, knew about the Stone.</p><p>He slips through Severus’ flames like a wraith, his eerie little smile fixed in place, and he pulls the Philosopher’s Stone out of his pocket. He tosses it casually into the air, and his rings clink against the smooth surface as he catches it again. The little bastard had already had it in his possession, though <i>when</i> the brat stole it is as much a mystery as how he got his fingers on Dumbledore’s wand.</p><p>He can admit it to himself, now. He really is unbearably fond of Harry Potter.</p><p>“Hello, Tom,” Potter says.</p><p>It’s the most pleasant thing anyone’s heard Harry Potter say all year. And, all things considered, the fact that the boy knows his true name is hardly a surprise. He knew about the Stone, about horcruxes, about <i>his</i> horcruxes specifically; his <i>name</i> is practically to be expected at this point.</p><p>“I don’t suppose I can convince you to give me that?” he asks. “Along with those little trinkets of mine?”</p><p>Potter shrugs. “The Stone? Sure.” He tosses it in the air again. Catches it. “We can negotiate for the rest. I mean, the Stone makes horcruxes kind of redundant, don’t you think? Not to mention, splitting your soul is hell on the complexion.”</p><p>Quirrell’s body spasms. Unicorn blood, willpower and the presence of his horcruxes has been a potent combination, but not even Lord Voldemort can keep this vessel going forever. The body is beginning to fail, and it is increasingly unlikely that Quirrell is going to survive.</p><p>Lord Voldemort has watched many of his vessels die over the last ten years. Quirrell, he thinks, he’ll actually miss. A weak wizard he may be, but he has served his Lord well – and Lord Voldemort has always been keen to reward those who serve him for their loyalty. <strike>He misses them, his first Knights. Theodotus, Corvus, Abraxus. His most faithful. His brothers-in-arms.</strike> It seems unfair that Quirrell, who has done more for him than most, will be rewarded only with his passing.</p><p>“Necromancy is hardly a healthy habit either, Mr Potter,” he says, looking pointedly towards Potter’s blackened nails and the thin strands of blue-green decay beginning to slip up his fingers. The scar on his forehead is vivid red – as red as the Stone – and he has the strangest urge to reach out and –</p><p>Oh. Oh, no. </p><p>“Eh,” Potter says. “Living’s overrated. I mean, being the whole Boy-Who-Lived. Where did that get me? Murdered in a forest because Dumbledore said so, that’s where.”</p><p>What?</p><p>“I mean, he could have at least taken the time to explain things. But noooooo ~” Potter’s face twists and he pitches his voice to something that’s an approximate attempt at one of Dumbledore’s wheedling guilt-trips. “‘I knew I was sentencing you to ten dark years, my boy,’ like I should take being abused into being a martyr as a good thing. What a fucking bag of dicks.” </p><p>
  <i>What?</i>
</p><p>The Philosopher’s Stone glitters in the firelight as Potter tosses it up one more time, catches it, and – with a flick of the wrist – tosses it in Lord Voldemort’s direction.</p><p>He catches it. Potter grins.</p><p>“You’re my horcrux,” he says. “Aren’t you?”</p><p>Potter taps a finger to his scar. “Yep,” he replies. “Fortunately for you, it’s a teeny-tiny scrap of a thing. Looks like a flayed baby. Kind of gross, but hey. He’s been with me a long time, curled up all mostly-dormant. I like him.”</p><p>Quirrell’s body spasms again. The Stone is literally in their grasp, but he can’t flee. Not without his horcruxes. </p><p>“I…am glad you do,” he says. He doesn’t want to touch the phrase ‘mostly-dormant’ but it’s triggered a paranoid itching in the back of his mind. Potter is a <i>menace</i>. </p><p>“<i>Also</i> good for you, you have the Philosopher’s Stone and an immortal kind-of-living horcrux. So the others? <i>Really</i> redundant. And that’s <i>great</i> because if you re-absorb them then you won’t be a snake-faced lunatic this time around.”</p><p>He tilts his head to the side, considering.</p><p>“A creepily attractive snake-faced lunatic, I admit,” he says. “But.”</p><p>…<i>What?</i></p><p>“Potter, have you lost your mind?” he asks. </p><p>Potter shrugs. “Nope. Well, maybe. Mostly, though, it’s probably just the time travel.”</p><p>Oh. Oh, no.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All Potter asks in return for aiding his resurrection is a permanent aging potion. </p><p>“Puberty was shit the first time around,” he says. “And being eleven again is weird.”</p><p>There are a lot of things about Potter that are weird, particularly his story about Hallows and time travel, but Lord Voldemort brews him his potion nonetheless. He can’t tell if it’s due to the cooperation of the Boy-Who-Lived, or the Stone, or the horcruxes, that have returned him to his true form, or if it’s a combination of all three, but Lord Voldemort has always rewarded those who have served him well and the potion is a simple enough reward. It gives him something to do, as well. Something for his hands and mind to be distracted by as he listens to Potter talk about a future that could never be, and a future that Potter himself did not live to see. It seems impossible – should have been impossible – but he’s had almost a full year to come to terms with Potter’s strangeness.</p><p>“You died, you said,” Voldemort says, staring into the cauldron bubbling on the stovetop.</p><p>“Yeah,” Potter says. “You murdered me. But. You know, I don’t think Dumbledore actually meant for me to realise his adolescent wannabe-Dark Lord fantasy? Or, at least, I don’t think he realised what the consequences would be if I did. Because death is…uh. More than people like to think about.”</p><p>Death to Lord Voldemort is an unmarked grave. It’s the whine of falling bombs and the muffled cries of panic in the dark as dust drifts down onto huddled bodies and the world shakes. It’s Snow White and Cinderella told over and over and <i>over</i> to soothe the children, over and over again until his voice broke. Death is green eyes and a green curse and a child with blue lips and death-stained fingers perched on the kitchen table of his father’s house.</p><p>He wants to ask. He knows, however, that he will not like the answer.</p><p>“So, when I died, I saw everything,” Potter continues. He’s fiddling with the chain of Slytherin’s locket. He’s claimed the Gaunt ring as well; it sits on the ring finger of his left hand like a promise. Voldemort’s other horcruxes, emptied of their soul fragments, sit next to him on the table top. The diary. The cup. The diadem. </p><p>Harry Potter had a remarkably busy Yuletide, and he had been <i>insistent</i> on their reabsorption.</p><p>“Everything that would be and everything that was and everything that could have been,” Potter says. “It was…a lot, to be honest. Probably a bit too much. But. The common theme was you, you know? The things you could have done if you hadn’t driven yourself batshit with horcruxes. Like an <i>idiot</i>.”</p><p>His one remaining horcrux is the smallest. It’s the irritating, obnoxious gremlin of a child claiming to be the Master of Death.</p><p>“Such concern, Potter,” he says, flicking a spare newt eye at the brat. “Don’t fret: I won’t be repeating my experiments.”</p><p>He’d thought the presence of his horcruxes had been enough to clear his mind. Having reabsorbed them, he’s more at peace than he’s ever been. Whole and healthy for the first time since he was sixteen, and he knows now – he <i>knows</i> - just how far he had fallen.</p><p>“What did you see that had you return to this time? To aid me?” he asks.</p><p>“Annihilation,” Potter whispers.</p><p>Fear slips down his spine, cold as ice, and he glances over at the boy. He’s still as stone, not breathing; his green eyes glazed and haunted. Something lurches in Voldemort’s chest, and he reaches out a hand to grasp the boy’s shoulder on instinct. It’s strange. Comforting people is not something that comes automatically to him. He’s not <i>good</i> at it. He hasn’t offered it since the Blitz, hunkered down amongst the other orphans in those forsaken tunnels. But Potter is his horcrux and, even aside from that, Voldemort likes him. He can…make the effort.</p><p>Potter’s shoulder is still and cold under his robes. It’s like touching a dead thing. And yet, the boy looks at him and smiles, and turns his head to press a kiss to Voldemort’s knuckles.</p><p>As disconcerting as it is to be flirted with by someone in the body of a child, Voldemort only squeezes a little tighter.</p><p>…</p><p>The aging potion transforms Potter into the young adult he had been when he died. It lengthens his hair to an uneven mop that hangs to just below his shoulders in heavy waves of messy curls. He grows and broadens, and yet remains shorter than he should have been, and waifish-lean. He stretches, joints cracking as they adjust to his new size, and he arches his back and sighs.</p><p>Something jolts, low in Voldemort’s belly. Like this, Potter no longer looks like a child to be coddled. He’s still a deathly thing: too pale, too blue around the mouth and blackened at his fingertips. But the soft lines of childhood have faded away, and suddenly Potter’s flirtations no longer seem uncomfortable.</p><p>Potter is <i>pretty</i>, damn him, and Lord Voldemort has never been particularly good at resisting his impulses.</p><p>His kisses taste of aging potion and ash. He’s sloppy, unpractised, but entirely willing as Voldemort strips him of his ill-fitting clothes and leaves him bare save for his former horcruxes. He’s vocal: he cries out and whimpers as Voldemort bites and sucks and kisses a path down the length of his throat, reaches up to tangle his fingers into Voldemort’s hair, pulling him closer. Voldemort grins against the crook of Potter’s shoulder.</p><p>He Apparates them to the room he’s taken as his own. It was a guest room in the manor’s heyday – he has no desire to sleep in the bed of any of his Muggle relatives, no matter how dead they are – and its plainness is proof of that fact. Lord Voldemort cares little for it, cares little for the manor itself save for the shelter it offers, beyond the bed he lays his horcrux down upon.</p><p>Potter looks up at him, eyes glittering and pupils blown; bruises forming on his neck from Voldemort’s kisses. He arches, wanton, pressing his pelvis up against Voldemort’s belly. He moans low in his throat and Voldemort leans down to steal it from him. </p><p>To steal it, and all the kisses that will come after it.</p><p>He knows himself. He’s a cruel, possessive man. He knows that Potter knows it – that he knows him better than anyone, in fact – but that the boy doesn’t mind it. That he <i>expects</i> it. </p><p>He twists his fingers through wild black hair and uses it to yank the boy’s head back, arching his neck. Potter whines. His fingers scrabble at Voldemort’s robes, pulling and twisting at the heavy fabric. He’s so <i>responsive</i>. Eager and easily pleasured. And <i>vocal</i>.</p><p>Voldemort bends to his task, wringing gasps and moans from his horcrux’s willing body. He takes his time; takes the boy apart. He bites and teases and tickles; discovers that Potter prefers his pleasure with a hint of pain; that his nipples make him weak and the backs of his thighs are delightfully sensitive. By the time he pushes Potter’s legs apart and presses into him, the boy is thrashing, crying – he’s pleading for Voldemort to <i>“just fucking get on with it and fuck me, you bastard”</i> like the awful little creature he is.</p><p>Voldemort takes him slowly. Deep, and hard and unbearably slow, until Potter is shaking in his arms from overstimulation; sobbing and incoherent. </p><p>Beautiful.</p><p>“I should keep you like this,” he says afterwards, twisting the chain of his former horcrux until it tightens around his lover’s neck. “Naked and willing. It suits you.”</p><p>Potter – Harry? – laughs softly. He’s curled close, leeching Voldemort’s body heat and hiding the tear tracks on his face. “You can if you want,” he replies. “Being a catamite sounds pretty relaxing, really. But I’d much rather, you know, give everyone a collective heart attack by helping you burn the establishment to the ground.”</p><p>…</p><p>Harry stands at his side a week later, as he summons his remaining followers to the shadowed gardens of Riddle Manor. He says nothing. He’s shrouded in grey robes, hooded and watchful as Voldemort greets the ones who never looked for him; never suffered in his name. He will make them suffer for their betrayals, in time, but now is not the moment for it – he needs them loyal and full of hope for a dark and glorious future.</p><p>“My friends,” he says. “Victory will soon be ours.”</p><p>Beside him, his beloved horcrux smiles.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This work is part of the 2020 Harry Potter Cross Gen Fest. The author will be revealed at the end of August.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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